W3C

Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) Charter

The mission of the Education and Outreach Working Group, part of the WAI International Program Office Activity, is to develop strategies and resources to increase awareness of the need for web accessibility and to educate the web community on accessibility solutions, in order to make the web accessible to people with disabilities including older people with accessibility needs.

EOWG's mission supports the work of other Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) groups within the WAI Technical Activity and the WAI International Program Office Activity.

Join the Education and Outreach Working Group.

End date 12 November 2015
Confidentiality Proceedings are Public. Some communications between editors may be member-confidential.
Initial Chairs Shawn Lawton Henry
Initial Team Contacts
(FTE %: 80)		 Shawn Lawton Henry
Usual Meeting Schedule

Teleconferences: Weekly, plus longer teleconferences one to four times annually
Face-to-face meetings: Once annually or more

Scope

The scope of EOWG work includes:

Initial areas of focus for this chartered period include:

Consistent with W3C Process requirements on Task Forces, the EOWG may form task forces composed of EOWG participants or join other W3C task forces to carry out assignments when under the chartered scope of EOWG. EOWG task forces must have a work statement approved by the EOWG, announced on the EOWG mailing list, and available from the EOWG home page. Task forces may hold separate teleconferences and meetings per the W3C process and with the approval of the EOWG.

Success Criteria

Out of Scope

EOWG does not intend to develop W3C Recommendations or new markup languages.

Deliverables

During this chartered period, EOWG may publish Working Group Notes and expects to publish "WAI Resources," which are stable WAI documents on the WAI website. Some WAI Resources are EOWG-approved deliverables; others are staff-developed resources that EOWG reviews.

EOWG plans to complete the following deliverables and activities during this chartered period, except as noted in the "Milestones" section below. Some items listed are updates of existing documents. Items marked [new] have not yet been published as completed documents, although several are well-developed drafts.

EOWG reviews other W3C Working Groups' deliverables from an education and outreach perspective, focusing on readability, understandability, and navigability (as opposed to technical content). EOWG expects to review the following during this chartered period:

Milestones

EOWG deliverables are produced on an ongoing basis throughout the life of the charter. The priority of specific topics to be addressed are driven by the needs of the web community and by the progress of deliverables in other WAI groups with which EOWG has dependencies. Therefore, topic and schedule information cannot be determined far in advance, and some deliverables listed above may be subject to change based on changed circumstances.

Plans for work on WAI Resource development and reviews can be tracked at:

Dependencies and Liaisons

Dependencies

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AUWG):
Assist in developing strategies and materials to support promotion and implementation of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG). Development of some EOWG deliverables is dependent on AUWG progress on ATAG 2.0.
Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG):
Assist in developing strategies and materials to support evaluation of websites for WCAG conformance, and/or for conformance to other WAI guidelines; assist in maintaining Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools database. Development of some EOWG deliverables is dependent on ERT WG progress on EARL 1.0 Schema and related documents.
Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG public page) (Member-only PFWG page):
Assist in developing strategies and materials to support promotion and implementation of WAI-ARIA. Updating of some EOWG deliverables is dependent on PFWG progress on WAI-ARIA.
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG):
Assist in developing strategies and materials to support promotion and implementation of User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) . Development of some EOWG deliverables is dependent on UAWG progress on UAAG 2.0.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG):
Assist in developing strategies and materials to support promotion and implementation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and to transition from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0. Consult with WCAG WG as needed on usability of WCAG 2.0 documents. Completion of some EOWG deliverables is dependent on WCAG 2.0 becoming a W3C Recommendation.

Liaisons

WAI Coordination Group (WAI CG public page) (Member-only WAI CG page):
EOWG Chair participates in the WAI CG in order to coordinate EOWG activities with other WAI groups.
WAI Interest Group (WAI IG):
Assist other W3C Working Groups in identifying issues to bring into WAI IG for discussion; also assist in tracking and capturing issues from the WAI IG mailing list and identifying areas where awareness and/or training resources are needed.
Research and Development Interest Group (RDIG):
Assist in defining areas for RDIG contribution, and in developing and promoting RDIG materials.

Additionally, EOWG anticipates coordinating with the following during this period on any accessibility education and outreach related work:

Furthermore, Education and Outreach Working Group will observe these W3C Recommendations:

Participation

To be successful, the Education and Outreach Working Group is expected to have 10 or more active participants for its duration. Historically, EOWG has had around 15 active participants. Effective participation to Education and Outreach Working Group is expected to consume at least 4 hours per week for each participant; one day per week for editors.

In addition to the Good Standing requirements in the W3C Process, EOWG participants in Good Standing must respond to e-mails sent to the EOWG mailing list and complete EOWG questionnaires in a timely manner.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list w3c-wai-eo@w3.org (archive). Additionally, Task Force mailing lists are used periodically.

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Education and Outreach Working Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

Patent Disclosures

The Education and Outreach Working Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topics addressed by the charter. This Working Group is not chartered to produce Recommendations with associated licensing obligations as described by the W3C Patent Policy. W3C reminds Working Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While this Working Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Working Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from other Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Education and Outreach Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

EOWG was originally chartered in March 1998, and has been rechartered three times since then. The EOWG is renewing its charter in order to continue developing education and outreach strategies and resources supporting web accessibility. The main changes since the previous charter are in the Deliverables section.

Charter author: Shawn Lawton Henry

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